north america in 49 days: San Francisco

On the morning of the sixth day, we took a Prime Time shared van ride to LAX to catch Virgin America flight to San Francisco. We We had a checkedin bag and we had to pay USD25.
The flight was 1hour and 30 minutes and the cost per person was USD 180.

We stayed at Marina Inn, Octavia Street, booked through bookings.com.

From the hotel, we took a walk to the starting point of the Powell-Hyde Cable Car route. As we only wanted to ride one way, we bought a ticket for USD6 per person.

Each cable car is staffed by two people: a conductor who sells tickets and looks after the passengers and a gripman, who runs the car. The official title for that job is now "grip person," but no matter what you call them, the way they work is interesting.

A set of levers and handles latches the car onto a moving cable that runs continuously underneath the street. To stop, they release the cable and put the brakes (which are just a big piece of wood that drags the ground). The hard part is do it all smoothly. And along with all that, the grip person is also the bell-ringer, signalling the car's approach and some folks do it with lots of style.

From there we proceeded to Pier 39 at Fisherman's Wharf.

Then we had our lunch - seafood of course at Fog Harbour Fish House

From where we were seated, we looked across to the Pier landing.

Coit Tower at Telegraph Hill was our next destination.

We bought the USD7 ticket from the souvenir shop on the ground floor. Then with the ticket, we were allow to take the lift to the top of the tower. The lift was a very old type of lift and the lift attendant had to pulled the iron grille to close the lift. Slowly, slowly the lift moved.

Finally, we reached the top.